The Racial Politics of US Gun Policy

Abstract

This chapter offers a biopolitical reading of U.S. domestic gun policy, examining gun laws to explore who gains power and profit through them and whose lives, health, and economic outcomes are detrimentally impacted by them. Gailey traces a trail that begins with an under-regulated manufacturing and retail market that enjoys special legal protections from the kinds of civil suits that have historically curtailed the harm of other damaging products, then moves to an under-regulated consumer base that promotes white gun ownership, and ends up in the war in drugs, where guns that originated on the legal market take a disproportionate toll on communities of color and are used to authorize state violence and extend incarceration.